King Sunny Ade: My Unexpected Baptism Into African Music

If you are a fan of African Music in all likelihood you own this already. If you love music, you should have this. Though I had heard snippets of African music in Paul Simon's Graceland, I wasn't really sure what it was all about. But as I do things sometimes, I had heard good reviews, so I picked it up. On first listen, seemed a little mellow for my punk rock Clash loving self. But I got into it pretty quickly afterward. A slow burner.

A Legend. A True Star.

In some ways the music is familiar to me, yet on another level it was communicating with me in another language. The late John Storm Roberts wrote in his book Black Music from Two Worlds, about the two way musical diaspora between Africa and the New World. A lot of the great musical traditions of the Caribbean and North and South America had their origins from traditional music from the African continent that had made its way here from the inhuman slave trade that once existed. More recently, African musicians listened, and were influenced by Cuban music, Calypso, Rhythm & Blues, Rock, & even Country and Folk music. These musical styles and instrumentation were incorporated with existing African music traditions and instrumentation and new exciting hybrids of these genres were created. Sometimes its hard to say precisely what an artist is doing exactly, and really who cares? Critics often compared the late Ali Farka Toure with American Blues artists like John Lee Hooker, but apparently he claimed that all his influences were home grown. So this mash up of styles, familiar and new, definitely got my musical curiosity going.

Part of my enjoyment of this record involves a change in my perspective. From what little I know about African music, it seems that it imbues almost every aspect of life and thus has many purposes. Music is associated traditionally with ritual, stages in human life, festivals, times of the year. I can see that on a lot of the pop records created for African consumption that the songs are often over ten minutes long. The music is party music, meant more for people getting together for dancing and celebrating for long periods of time. But punk rock, with its emphasis on brevity and speed was what I was into, and this record threw me a change up. And it broadened my musical perspectives and helped to keep from just being part of the herd
taste wise.

I met John Storm Roberts a long time ago. He had music label Original Music, that specialized in World Music, mostly African music. I found his music anthology Africa Dances at Tower records and that basically put me over the edge with African music. He was having a music sale at his home in Tivoli, NY, so I and a friend went up to check it out. At one point I tried to engage him in conversation, but the funny thing was, every point I made I got wrong. He kept saying politely, no its not quite like that, not really. I wasn't trying to present my self as a know-it-all--I was just trying to say that I enjoyed music from Africa.

So maybe you should take all I've said so far with a grain of salt. I don't know anything about the many claims I have heard about copyright infringement in his recordings. But I do think that he wasn't out to be a millionaire, that his intentions were to make this music available to interested people without actually having to travel to Africa. From a perfectly selfish perspective I am grateful that I got a chance to hear some wonderful musicians and I doubt I would have spent a not inconsiderable amount of money on "world music" without his influence. I recall reading a later interview with him on the Internet where he seemed pretty bitter that more people couldn't appreciate this music, as opposed to Britney Spears or whoever the next big marketing project is, and it saddened me to think that things turned out this way for him. It happens so often with people who do things as a labor of love.

And as a matter of perspective, remember that Africa is a large continent, with a host of traditions, languages, cultures, and musical styles, so when I say African music, there are no generalizations here. Sometime it seems a little silly to even use such a term. Only with a term so general could you lump together music as disparate as Ethio-Jazz, South African Mbanqa, Nigerian Highlife, Zanzabari Taarab and Senegalese Mbalax. But JuJu Music was my starting off point, and it is not a bad place to dip your toes in before taking a complete musical plunge. Believe me, you don't have to be a very adventurous person to enjoy this album.

King Sunny Ade is one of the greatest African artists ever, and in his native Nigeria he has put out bazillions of recordings. And Juju Music, his first American release on Mango records is as good a place as any to sample from his huge catalogue. Ja Funmi is a gentle workout of an opener--you first notice the interplay of rhythms between the guitar and the percussion. Then the sweet chanting of the lead vocals trading off with backing vocals. The bent string guitar leads ensuing remind me of pedal steel or even hawaiian guitar music. The second song Eje Nlo Gba Ara Mi, has some nice spidery and other times percussive guitar work. Another distinctive feature of this music is that the band is huge. There must be twenty people performing on this album and there is a real communal vibe here. Mo Beru Agba, the third song really highlights the percussion, the talking drums and more call and response vocals, as does the following song Sunny Ti Di Ariya. As you might guess from the song title Ade vocals are in his native tongue, Yoruban.

The musicianship throughout the recording is impeccable. And the sunny upbeat nature of the songs definitely makes this a good album to put on if you are having a bad day and want to cheer up a bit. I love the guitar riffing in the middle Ma Jaiye Oni, definitely one of my favorite songs on here. Overall the music has a trance-like, hypnotic, psychedelic quality about it and if you have never heard African music before, this is definitely going to be different from anything you have ever heard. And you will wind up getting hooked like I did.